Suddenly, on the other side of the platform, behind Lord Parham, he noticed that Kitty and Eddie Helston were exchanging signs. Kitty drew out a tablet, wrote upon it, and, leaning over some white-frocked children of the Lord Lieutenant who sat behind her, handed the torn leaf to Helston. But from some clumsiness he let it drop; at the moment a door opened at the back of the platform, and the leaf, caught by the draught, was blown back across the bench where Kitty and the house-party were sitting, and fluttered down to a resting-place on the piece of red baize wheron Lord Parham was standing—close beside his left foot.
Ashe saw Kitty's start of dismay, her scarlet flush, her involuntary movement. But Lord Parham had started on his peroration. The rustics gaped, the gentry sat expressionless, the reporters toiled after the great man. Kitty all the time kept her eyes fixed on the little white paper; Ashe no less. Between him and Lord Parham there was first the Lord Lieutenant, a portly man, very blind and extremely deaf—then a table with a Liberal peer behind it for chairman.
Lord Parham had resumed his seat. The tent was shaken with cheers, and the smiling chairman had risen.
"Can you ask Lord Parham to hand me on that paper on the floor," said Ashe, in the ear of the Lord Lieutenant, "it seems to have dropped from my portfolio."
The Lord Lieutenant, bending backward behind the chairman as the next speaker rose, tried to attract Lord Parham's attention. Eddie Helston was, at the same time, endeavoring to make his way forward through the crowded seats behind the Prime Minister.
Meanwhile Lord Parham had perceived the paper, raised it, and adjusted his spectacles. He thought it was a communication from the audience—a question, perhaps, that he was expected to answer.
"Lord Parham!" cried the Lord Lieutenant again, "would you—"
"Silence, please! Speak up!"—from the audience, who had so far failed to catch a word of what the new speaker was saying.
"What is the matter? You really can't get through here!" said a gray-haired dowager crossly to Eddie Helston.
Lord Parham looked at the paper in mystification. It contained these words: